Tuesday, August 30, 2011

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Robert Rotenberg is one of Toronto's top criminal lawyers. He will be here in the store for a signing and meet and greet. Please Join us!

Robert's second novel is a another scorching page-turner.With a main suspect from Cobalt and a scene right here in the store!!!

From the publisher:On the morning that his headline-grabbing divorce trial is set to begin, Terrance Wyler, youngest son of the Wyler Food dynasty, is found stabbed to death in the kitchen of his million-dollar home. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the press and finds Wyler’s four-year-old son asleep upstairs. When Wyler’s ex-wife, a strange beauty named Samantha, shows up at her lawyer’s office with a bloody knife, it looks as if the case is over. But Greene soon discovers the Wyler family has secrets they’d like to keep hidden, and they’re not the only ones. If there’s one thing Greene knows, it’s that the truth is never simple.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Last night when I was leaving, there was a box on the porch. I was pretty sure that I knew what it was, but I left it there and went on my errands.
When Joe and I got home last night, it was still there.

I brought it in and put it on the counter, and that box and I had a bit of a staring match in the kitchen. It won, so I opened it, half scared, half thrilled, half flipped out. (I know that adds up to 1.5, which is probably why it felt so strange.) I put my hand in the box and pulled out the contents - two books wrapped in brown paper, and I carried them into the living room without unwrapping them. I went back to the kitchen and got a largish glass of wine, and then slowly unwrapped the package on my lap.

It is an actual book, made out of an actual manuscript that I actually wrote. It's All Wound Up, and it is (Joe and I had to count last night) book number seven.
It is very beautiful. I held it, and noted all sorts of details. That it has an orange spine. (I love that) That they are still using the old author photo that makes me look unreasonably young and beautiful (I love that too.) That the book feels good in your hands, has nice paper, feels like it's the right weight, and especially that it looks related to the other books of essays that I've produced over the years. It feels to me like getting a sister, or a cousin in the family, and I'm glad it looks that way. I turned it over and over, and then opened it, and started to read at random spots.

There is virtually no way for me to describe to you (except for those of you who are authors) the feeling that is reading a book that you wrote. The words that I wrote in a notebook or on my computer, now suddenly on pages - The hours and hours of swearing and laughing and crumpling things up and getting up at two in the morning because I'd had an idea and it was a good one, or even the heartbreak of writing for hours and figuring out it was all crap and could never, ever be allowed to see the light of day for even one second... all of that experience, condensed into a book that will go to bookshops and into your homes?

It's like standing in the bushes outside of a school so you can see your child playing inside, or the first time you go into the place where your teenager works and see them doing just that. It's the disorienting feeling of seeing someone you know really well, someone you understand completely in a certain context - suddenly transported to this more formal independent place where suddenly they are their whole own thing, large and real and bigger than you imagined, moving to a place without you.

This book is quite possibly the hardest won of all of them. We have all had (or will have) an Annus Horribilis, and the one designated for this family fell smack in the middle of writing this book. I struggled to write it. There are writers who will tell you that they are not complete without writing. Writers who will tell you that they need to write the way they need air, food or yarn. Writers who tell you that they would do it whether they had to or not, just to be fulfilled as a person.
I am not that sort of writer. I probably would write whether I had to do it or not, but mostly I look at it as my job, and smack in the middle of a crisis or ten, like most people, I would rather not go to work, but had to. What I wrote then didn't make it into this book. It was not bad writing. It was wonderful writing. It was - however, writing produced in the middle of grief and sadness and learning and when I looked at it, I realized that it was - almost all of it, more intimate, more raw, and more naked than I had intended for it to be. It felt like being caught crying at work...topless.)

I tried then to soften it. To cover its nudity with more words and fewer details and at some point I realized that I had dressed it to the point that it didn't even look like me - and I started over. I realized that book- whatever I had written, was something for another time, when wounds were healed, and I put it in a drawer, and went for long walks, and long talks, and sat back down and wrote again, and what I had at the end of that was the book that arrived last night.

It is my favourite.

If you've been reading for a long time you might recognize a few old stories, (Joe and the truck, for starters) but that's only two out of twenty-nine stories. The rest are new, and I think you'll love them. There's a bunch that are funny, and a bunch that are something else, and there's one in there that left and returned to the manuscript about ten times, because it is a little close to that public nudity I mentioned, but in the end it felt good to put it there. An homage to the book and the place I moved through to get here. I'm sure you'll see it when it goes by.

It has been two years since I had a book published. It feels like forever. There will be a tour. I will be on the road and hopefully, if things are the same way between us, I'll meet a bunch of you and see a bunch of you again.

I'm delighted. I'm proud. I'm scared too.

I'm holding a book, and I wrote it, and that never gets old.

(PS. I know some of you will pre-order this book online, and that's great and I'm exceedingly grateful, but if you are considering buying the book (or any book, really) could I ask a favour? Would you consider buying it at your local bookstore? I think it's "use it or lose it" time for a lot of them, and they're the ones who make things like tours and author readings and signings possible. Buying the book at the store is a nice way to thank them for hosting knitters, and make it possible for us to keep meeting like this.)

(PPS. It is the first book of mine that says "New York Times Bestselling Author" on it, and I can't tell you how much I like it. I know that's prideful, but I can't help it.)

Chat Noir Books now has Copies of "A Cure for Emma: One Mother's Journey to Oz" by Julie Colvin available here in the store!! We also have a few sign copies in stock as well.

If your not able to get into the store we can ship a copy of the book to you. YOu can contact us by email chatnoir@ntl.sympatico.ca or by phone 705-647-8215.

Julie Colvin is a local author who lives here in Temiskaming Shores.

"During my fourteen years as a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer, I acquired a vast knowledge of the body and its organ systems. It was not until dis-ease struck my family that I became aware of a larger picture of health. One that involved natural holistic approaches, self-empowerment, and the very thoughts we choose to think."

A Cure for Emma

"The tsunami of '04... The death of my dearest friend... The crash landing of our plane on my family's first vacation. That should have been enough to bring me to a place of deeper reflection—oh, how I wish!

Sometimes, the waters of change become murkiest before settling into their calmer, more pristine state. When that pivotal moment strikes, changing everything, you have a choice: retreat into fear and despair, or heal the wounds of the past, focus on the future you intend to create, and listen to any messages tap-tapping on your door or inside your head.

It took the diagnosis of an incurable disease for my seven-year-old daughter—our fourth catastrophe in one year—to grab me by the shoulders and stop me in my tracks. This turning point, this "cry Uncle" moment made me see the vibrational boomerangs I had been sending out into the universe. I could no longer ignore the relentless pounding of these similar energetic events and ever hope to live in peace.

It was time to cut a deal with my analytical, scientifically-trained mind—to investigate and participate in a world that could not be proven in a lab. From medical professional to wellness facilitator and stay-at-home mom/pancreas, there had to be a way to get back on track and save my daughter, my family and my mental state. There was no doubt: I would turn over every stone until I found it!"

Friday, August 19, 2011

We're ready to sign up the Green Apple Books guys to do our April Fools issue. Yesterday the San Francisco store issued this announcement:

In a move spurred by Amazon.com's campaign to collect 500,000-plus signatures in an effort to overturn California's Sales Tax Fairness law via referendum, Green Apple Books owners Pete Mulvihill, Kevin Ryan, and Kevin Hunsanger have decided that they, too, will take a step toward not collecting sales tax. "We, too, are fed up with government providing infrastructure, security, and education," says Pete Mulvihill. "Enough is enough."

Co-owner Kevin Ryan further argues that while Green Apple Books is a long-established presence in San Francisco that has always collected sales tax, there are more compelling reasons for the store to discontinue the practice. "Sure, the sales tax on books purchased at our store contributes to a better quality of life for all Californians, including social services for the elderly and disabled, but collecting sales tax kind of feels like overkill. We do enough for the community anyway," says Ryan.

"I like Amazon's angle here, and I think ALL indie stores should be exempt," adds co-owner Kevin Hunsanger.

* More than two-thirds of Green Apple's staff do not have children and therefore should not really contribute tax money to public education.
* Most of the staff members do not own cars, so maintaining good roads isn't that important. They could just walk.
* Statistics suggest that booksellers are 36% less likely to use emergency services than antiques dealers.
* Although many of the staff at Green Apple do in fact enjoy state and local parks, they sort of think someone other than the bookstore's customers should pay to maintain them.

On Saturday, August 20, 2011, co-owner Kevin Ryan will hit the streets in an effort to collect enough signatures to put this issue into the hands of voters.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

George R.R. Martin has enlisted his fans' help in tracking down some missing scripts that were to be auctioned off for charity at worldcon this week. On his blog, he wrote that he had hoped "to bring a couple of signed scripts from the first season of the HBO series Game of Thrones with us, and the good folks in Belfast were kind enough to donate them. Dan Weiss sent them across the pond (registered and priority, signature required). All that arrived was a battered envelope and Dan's cover letter."

Martin is convinced the scripts were stolen, so he is "putting out the word to all my fans and readers. Whoever sold these scripts will presumably try to cash in at some point. So if any of you ever see scripts fitting this description turn up on eBay, one of its competitors, or on some dealer's table--notify me at once, and report the stolen property to whatever local authorities are appropriate."

The missing teleplays include the final shooting scripts for episodes nine and ten of season one, "Baelor" and "Fire and Blood," autographed by writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and director Alan Taylor, printed on white paper.

"Like Bloodraven, I have a thousand eyes and one," Martin wrote. "So let's keep 'em all peeled, boys and girls."

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Monday, August 15, 2011

Hi all. I've asked Paul and Jennifer to move my reading at Le Chat Noir from Thursday August 25 to Friday evening, August 26th. I do this reluctantly, but for a very good cause.

I've joined with Margaret Atwood and other writers to fight the move by Toronto politicians to close a number of our local libraries and have been invited to attend an important press conference on the Thursday.

If any of you have read THE GUILTY PLEA, I think you will see how important I believe libraries are. They sure were to Samantha...who of course was born Cobalt.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience, and I hope to see you all on, to repeat, FRIDAY AUGUST 26, 6:00 p.m. at Le Chat Noir Books...right across the street from the New Liskeard Library. Seems fitting doesn't it?